If you have a website built on the WordPress platform, congratulations on your excellent decision. There are around 100 million or so sites on WordPress, and it is a stable and free environment for a small business website. There are premium themes and plugins out there for professionals, but you can always use a promo code to save on those.

Of course, blogging on a WordPress site for business requires dedication to a plan and frequent posting, that is, if you want to bring in business from your site.

Build a Schedule with Post Subject Ideas

Some call this an Editorial Calendar, but the name isn’t important. What is important is that you commit to a schedule for posting and a calendar with title and subject ideas is a great help. If you’re struggling with new ideas for articles, think about the number of questions you’re asked in the course of business. You get questions in person, via email, and maybe from the website itself through forms.

Every question is a subject for a post, which will be your answer expanded out to make a good article for site visitors and for SEO, Search Engine Optimization. You don’t have to pose the title as a question, though it’s OK to do so. The idea is to put content on your site that will be of value to your visitors, and what could be more valuable than answers to the questions you’re being asked?

Get a Plugin for Sharing by Your Site Visitors

Actually, the latest WordPress versions have a built-in function for adding social sharing icons to your posts and pages. However, there are also free and fancier paid plugins that give you more choices and flexibility as to how and where to display these share icons. You want them everywhere you have content, with every post and every page. If you do videos and/or images to sell or illustrate your products or services, make them shareable as well.

Use Automated Sharing When You Publish

Before you can put this into play, you need a presence on the major social media platforms. Build a Facebook page for your business. Have a dedicated Twitter account, and one on LinkedIn as well if you do B2B, Business to Business articles. Take a look at Google+ as well if you want to do community-related postings for a local business, as a Google+ Community is ideal for this strategy.

What you want to do is to have your new posts and articles automatically posted to these social sites when you hit the publish button to make them live on your site. You may find a free plugin or two for some of this, but it may take a paid one to do them all with one.

You’ll have to jump through some technical hoops to make this happen, as these sites do not just let posts come in from anywhere or anyone. You’ll be given instructions in setting up an API on each social site and you’ll get some secret keys to drop into the plugin(s) to get the social site to communicate with your website.

Once you get everything working, you’ll write your posts, hit that publish button, and they’ll go live for eyeballs on your site. Now though, they’ll also go live across the social spectrum, and depending on how many contacts/friends/followers you have, you leverage your exposure with linkage back to your site.

Now just go out and work to get as many followers and friends across these sites. As you build your sphere of influence, you’ll increase the eyes on your posts and website dramatically. That’s what your business website should be doing, and it’s free or very inexpensive to make it happen.

A business website should have one overriding purpose: generating business. Sure, it can be a brand awareness site as well, and it can showcase your business’ previous accomplishments. However, it should be delivering prospects and customers. One way to do that? Give out coupon codes for your business’ service on the landing page. Customers love a deal, especially a limited-time GoDaddy hosting promo code. You can also get ones for other merchants at DiscountGo, which your customers will appreciate and use on sites like eBay and Amazon.

Here are the steps you can take to improve your current website or use to create a new one that will evolve into a great asset for your business.

Step 1: Know your goals and make them specific.

What do you want to do with your website? Are you selling products, services, both? Is your sales cycle a single impulse purchase or a multiple step decision or transaction process? Depending on these inputs, you could be enticing a customer to make a purchase decision, or you could be developing a prospect and moving them through a process to a deal. Write down all of your product lines, services, and interim steps between a visit to your website and a purchase or transaction decision.

Step 2: Decide which goals or process steps can be presented well online.

If you sell products, obviously you’ll want to have them presented on the site with high-quality images and sales text, as well as a mechanism to either order online or directions to walk into your place of business and buy them. If you’re a service business, you can describe your services, also using images and well-written text.

Step 3: Don’t go SEO crazy.

Search Engine Optimization has evolved dramatically over the past 5 to 10 years. Using a few keywords or phrases repeatedly is no longer the key to good search engine positioning. That’s not to say that you shouldn’t try, but don’t stress out over it. You’re far more likely to generate great traffic using other marketing methods that drive visitors to your site.

Step 4: Think Landing Pages

A landing page is just what the name implies: a page on which a site visitor lands. This step is where you make a major change in the way you design and publish content on your website. You will likely have multiple pages for each major product line or service. That’s because you want to be able to track where your visitors are coming from with your site statistics, also called analytics.

You’ll still only have one homepage, but an example can help to illustrate the multiple landing page strategy. Assume you’re a service business, maybe a home repair business. You do basic home cosmetic repairs, such as repairing doors, screens, windows, etc.

Once you have a specific purpose in mind, it’s much easier to design a landing page that converts. You can even hire someone off Fiverr to design it for you, since you don’t need to hire an expensive expert to tell you what it is you want.

You develop a page that talks about your window repairs, sealing for leaks, weatherizing, or maybe energy savings sealing. Now, you do two or three versions of this page, changing the wording enough to make these pages original for the most part. You’re not worried that much about SEO, but it helps.

Now you use the URL, that’s the website address for each unique version of the page, in different advertising. For your classified ad, you may use HomeServices.com/windows. For your magazine ads, you could use HomeServices.com/energysave. You’re getting the idea. What you want is to be able to look at your website analytics later and see which landing pages are getting the most traffic. This tells you which marketing is working best for you. You can better use your advertising dollars, which will bring you more business.

Step 5: Use social sites effectively.

Take that landing page customization strategy to the social sites as well. You may be doing most of your other marketing on social sites anyway. You gain some leverage here with your site statistics. They will show the pages that sent you your traffic, called referrers. You are also going to be able to track which messages or marketing information works best using the landing page customization strategy.

Make the multiple versions different in some of the pitch language, or feature different product or service characteristics on the different versions. This will help you to learn over time which features or characteristics are most interesting to your site visitors.

Follow this five-step plan, and you’ll begin to grow your website business over time. It’s a simple plan to put into action at low cost for excellent returns.

Are you looking for the best WordPress theme for your news site or online magazine? With more people preferring to get their dose of top stories from online newspapers rather than print versions, there’s a huge market waiting to be tapped. However, you need to play your cards well and use one of the best newspaper/ magazine themes to create a success story like The Verge.

Some of the top-rated news sites such as BBC America, Fortune, Reuters, The New York Times, Quartz, and GoDaddy use freebie WordPress themes to create that powerful look. If you aspire to build the next big thing, here’s our list of best newspaper/magazine themes on Themeforest to give you wings. We have compiled the list based on highest quality designs, best demos, customization settings, responsive layouts, plug-ins and so on.

1. Newspaper

That’s right, it’s simply called: “Newspaper”. This theme may look familiar to you, in that it’s built to look just like the New York Times’ website (nytimes.com if you want to look for yourself).

If you are beginner then play safe with the top-selling newspaper themes of all times, also the first in our list. It has more than 75,000 happy customers and that figure says it all! Whether you want to create an outstanding new portal, magazine, or review site, this WordPress theme is bang on. Despite its professional and powerful appearance, the theme is user-friendly, simple, and easy to use.

Newspaper comes with over 50 one-click demos, drag-and-drop website building facility, and numerous integrated plug-ins such as BuddyPress, WooCommerce, bbPress Forum, Instagram, and SEO practices. It also supports responsive AdSense and Google Ads to help you monetize your news site.

2. Newsmag – News Magazine Newspaper

Do you want your site to look like a mix of newspaper and magazine? Something that broadcasts top stories and reviews but also retains that glossy charm. Check out the Newsmag, one of the best selling online magazine themes that feature innovative design, flexible layout, solid rating system, and first-class support.

With Newsmag, you can write your own articles and blog posts in easy steps. It comes integrated with Youtube/ Vimeo videos and other plugins such as WPBakery Page Builder, Drag-and-Drop gallery, Instagram, Newsletter plugin and so on.

3. Soledad – Multi-Concept Theme

When you have a dozen ideas bubbling in your head, consider a theme that allows you to reflect your creative and diverse thoughts on online media. Soledad is a multi-concept theme that allows you to create single post templates for different stories. It presents unlimited possibilities with over thousands of sliders and layouts.

Soledad is one of the best newspaper/magazine themes on Themeforest with features like one-click installation, faster loading sites, and easy website building tool (no coding needed). There are more than 600 live customization options and the numerous integrated plugins that make it easier to bring your visions into reality.

4. Vlog – Video Blog / Magazine

Seeing is believing and this explains why the video-based news sites and magazines are becoming the new fad. The audience prefers watching a video rather than reading through a news story or review. If you are up for it, get the Vlog theme focused mainly on videography. It caters to the needs of a powerful video news site or magazine.

Vlog allows you to import Youtube videos to your site, upload your own video, group videos into a playlist, watch in cinema-mode, and so on. There are over 200 attractive post layout options, multiple header layouts, and integrated plugins such as bbPress Support, Built-in Social Media, WooCommerce, and RTL support.

5. REHub WordPress Theme

Do you want your website or blog to have a little bit of everything? Here’s a hybrid Gutenberg-optimized WordPress theme that can be converted into a news site, online magazine, Affiliate site, deal sites, price comparison platform, e-commerce store, and so on. With over 40 custom frontend modules and page controls, REHub has a modern and clean design which keeps updating to accommodate the needs of customers.

Amazon Associates recommends REHub as the first theme to choose for an affiliate site. If you wish to use your news sites or magazine to sell affiliate products, compare prices, etc, this is the go-to theme for all your needs. Some of the popular integrated plug-ins are WP Bakery Page Builder, RH Brand logo, Revolution slider, WPAI Post addon, and RH Woo Tools.

6. Sahifa – Responsive WordPress News Theme

Sahifa earns the 6th place in our list of best newspaper/magazine themes on Themeforest. It has everything you can ask for in a newspaper/magazine theme – clean, customizable, flexible, fast-loading, functional, user-friendly, and highly responsive. It has an excellent admin panel that offers over 400 options to configure theme settings, change color, fonts, and layouts. It can also be translated to any language of your choice and the one-click demo allows you to see your website’s live updates.

Sahifa creates highly responsive websites that can be easily optimized for mobile and hand-held devices. You can build your website without coding knowledge, stay ahead with SEO optimization, and enjoy fast loading speed, thanks to the numerous plugins such as WooCommerce Ready, bbPress Ready, and Built-in Review System.

Charisma Theme Features:

1. The slider was total changed with a new one ( the old one was not work correctly with IE7).2. Added new options for slider : Animation Speed, Auto Slide Interval, Auto Start, and also one option to hide the slider on pages for Chris C.3. Minor Bug Fixes.4. The framework was updated (added few changes to the code).5. Added Tags in single.php for Michael M.